The artillery battery boomed at the same time as the Akkara mechs fired their ballistic cannons loaded with long-ranged shells! Multiple deep booms thrummed throughout the camp at the same time, causing the very ground to shake and deafening sounds to assault everyone’s ears! If everyone hadn’t already unfolded their helmets in order to protect their ears, they would have turned half-deaf already! A short time later, the pin-point targeted artillery shells landed in the midst of the sacred gods, with multiple shells impacting directly against Pairixan’s considerable bulk! As the artillery cannons reloaded, the dust and smoke that obscured the sacred gods slowly blew away. "Energy levels are spiking among the sacred gods! Multiple energy tornadoes are forming!" As the effects of the initial salvo stopped blocking the vision of their long-ranged sensors, the Flagrant Swordmaidens saw to their astonishment that the sacred gods and beast riders survived the bombardment with nary a scratch! When Captain Byrd rewinded the footage to an instant just before the artillery shells hit, a huge energy barrier extended over the tightly-grouped sacred gods! "Qilanxo’s energy barrier blocked the artillery shells!" "Damnit, they fooled us!" Pairixan’s mate Qilanxo already activated her power the moment the sacred gods left the city! As the second god of the Eastern Samar Pantheon, she earned a very high position solely due to the fact that she excelled in defensive barriers. Qilanxo’s defensive specialisation made up for Pairixan’s deficiency in this area. While he could manipulate the earth to shield himself from enemy attacks, his powers took far too long to take effect. In contrast, Qilanxo could call up shaped barriers with just an instant of thought! Captain Byrd placed a lot of importance on the Vandal artillery mechs and cannons. Their ability to fire at the sacred gods beyond viewing distance gave them the chance to inflict serious damage on Pairixan before the enemy put up their guard. They had hoped to kill or inflict serious damage on the ambitious younger son of the Great Father before Qilanxo thought to active her renowned defensive barriers! "There are limits to their protective energy fields and barriers! Artillery, proceed to coordinate your fire on Pairixan! Laser rifleman mechs, open fire! Don’t let them accumulate energy in peace!" As the sacred gods each called down energy tornados on their forms with the help of their god crystals, shells and lasers started to bombard their position with unrelenting fury! Continuous booms and impacts sounded out at both the camp and the battlefield. The destructive firepower of the artillery mechs and cannons should have been enough to sweep away half a city, yet after four intensive salvos Qilanxo’s energy barrier still held strong! "What does it take to crack open Qilanxo’s shell?!" The beast riders sitting in their saddles on top of the beasts yelled in fury at the explosions rocking the giant energy barrier. Rather than weakening, the barrier grew stronger as the energy tornado called down by Qilanxo started to infuse her god crystal’s energy resevoir with an abundance of energy. She possessed sixteen god crystals, which was one less than Hokaz. Although Qilanxo was a lot younger than the Tyrant of the Wastes, her raw energy capacity didn’t lose out too much! Her powers and energy capacity firmly propelled the female sacred god in the ranks of ace mechs! Ves looked over the shoulders of the sensor operators and read the energy readings of Qilanxo’s energy barrier. The level of protection it offered for a given amount of energy far surpassed the efficiency of energy screens employed by most of humanity! Even the hundreds of laser beams that struck specific points in the energy barrier failed to penetrate its defenses! Reading through the data, Ves quickly figured out why the energy barrier remained so impervious. "Qilanxo’s barriers aren’t purely based on converting energy into a barrier that can block damage. They’re manipulating space!" The intelligence gathered by the spy drones failed to ferret out this important detail! This was the problem of relying on hearsay from the local city dwellers. Their own ignorance and lack of understanding towards the powers of the god had misled the Vandal analysts! In any case, an energy barrier based on energy differed remarkably from a barrier formed out of solidified space! Captain Byrd gritted her teeth. "Stick to the plan. Maintain a coordinated rate of fire and keep up the pressure! I don’t believe Qilanxo can maintain her energy barrier forever!" Nonetheless, after being struck by ten more artillery salvos and thousands of laser beams, the energy barrier held strong! During this time, the sacred gods all supplemented their god crystals with the help of the energy tornados. None of the shelling and laser bombardment managed to halt their charging process. The sacred gods and their beast riders roared their defiance at the attackers in the distance as they continued to proceed forward! After they slowly crawled three kilometers forward, Pairixan abruptly halted. The beast roared towards the ground as his god crystals glowed a little brighter. Suddenly, a vast stretch of ground before him began to explode as the soil beneath started to shift under his influence. "All of our mines in the vicinity prematurely detonated or got crushed by abnormal soil movements!" "Damn, this exobeast is a sharp one! He’s able to detect our mines underneath the soil." The raft of explosions from the extensive minefield covertly placed beforehand threw the entire terrain into a crater-filled wasteland! The Vandals dug huge amounts of ordnance underneath the soil. Even if the sacred gods wouldn’t sustain significant damage from the explosions, at least it should have slowed them down by destabilizing their footing. However, Pairixan showed his control over the earth by forcibly exerting his efforts towards the ground, flattening out the uneven terrain and hardening its surface so that it could bear the sacred gods within causing their limbs to sink. It barely took two minutes to straighten out a couple of square kilometers of affected terrain! The five sacred gods continued to hunker forward under the omnipotent protection of Qilanxo’s energy barrier, though it would be more apt to call it a space barrier! However you called it, the space barrier completely negated the advantages the Vandals placed their hopes upon. No matter how much firepower they rained down at the space barrier, Qilanxo looked as if she could keep it up for hours! This was more than enough time for Pairixan to come within viewing distance of the camp, upon which he’d be able to devastate it with an earthquake or some other god-like feat of earth manipulation! All the plans the Flagrant Swordmaidens came up with basically consisted of shelling the hell out of the huge but slow-moving sacred gods. They made allowances for their energy fields, but they never expected Qilanxoto be so abnormally strong, to the point of shouldering enough firepower to wipe out half of Samar or more. They really shouldn’t have underestimated any of the sacred gods! However, the Vandals didn’t believe that the space barrier could shield the sacred gods forever. Any form of defense possessed a flaw! Right now, the Vandals continued their shelling but varied their ordnance a bit in order to explore what it took to crack or circumvent this defense. "Load incendiary shells and fire a salvo!" This finally produced a different result. When the shells hit and released gouts of propellants on fire, the sacred gods started to get spooked. They weren’t used to being surrounded by fire from all sides! The flames and smoke obscured their own vision, causing them to lose direction and be unable to figure out what to do for a moment! "How much incendiary shells do we have?" "Only enough for three more salvos, ma’am!" "Tell the artillery cannons to save them up. Only load them into the cannons when given the order!" The incendiary shells and the fire burning over the space barrier and in the surrounding terrain spooked caused a lot of difficulties. In particular, all of the burning and smoke choked out the beast riders riding atop the sacred gods. As blessed people who have inherited their optimized genes from former CFA officers, they possessed a considerable capacity to hold their breaths. However, they still faced difficulties if their lungs stopped for a couple of minutes straight. Their brains still needed oxygen to function! A tactical officer offered a suggestion. "Captain, Qilanxo’s energy barrier isn’t able to seal up their entire surroundings. It’s still leaving out a gap for air to circulate. If we launch our poison shells, we can incapacitate the beast riders." Dr. Tillman studied the physiques of the blessed and cursed people extensively. While both possessed a considerable natural resistance against poison, the blessed people enjoyed much weaker protection, only able to rely on their optimized baseline human genes. The dwarves were considerably more resilient in that regard. Up to now, the exobiologists still hadn’t been able to formulate a sedative that could knock a dwarf unconscious without killing him right afterwards. Several minutes went by as the sacred gods managed to move out of the firestorm with difficulty. Flames still burned above the space barrier, but the propellant almost ran their course. "Alright. Load in three poison shells and fire them at these coordinates. Let the wind waft underneath the space barrier and take effect." The space barrier blocked all physical damage and most forms of energy attacks, so detonating the poison shells above it would see most of the active elements blown away. So instead, the Vandals proceeded to fire the poison shells a short distance away and let them release their invisible and odorless gas into the surrounding terrain. The wind quickly blew them into the middle of the sacred gods. Due to the miniscule size of the poisonous particles, the individual energy fields that empowered the scales of the sacred gods and covered the position of the beast riders had no effect! The protection offered by the energy field mainly defended against threats that could be seen with the naked eye. Against this invisible and insidious form of attack, neither the sacred gods nor the beast riders suspected anything amiss in the limited air. "The beast riders are being affected by the poison gas." Blurry footage from their long-ranged sensors detected abnormal behavior from the beast riders. With the concentration of gas blowing through their positions, the chosen of the gods should have been knocked unconscious by now. However, while the blessed people atop the sacred gods swayed in their saddles, they somehow managed to stay conscious. The beast riders of Pairixan and Qilanxo were least affected of all! "The poison gas achieved limited results! The beast riders are withstanding the effects of the gas!" "Fire the remaining nine poison shells immediately!" A short time later, the concentration of poison increased to a level that wouldn’t have knocked a human unconscious, but outright kill them if they casually inhaled the air! Yet the beast riders remained conscious and breathing even if they encountered difficulties. The sacred gods all roared in anger, with some of them even starting to blow at the air in order to disperse the foul air. "How are the beast riders still alive?! We threw enough poison in there to kill a thousand humans!" None of the doctors and exobiologists on staff knew the answer. They all shook their heads or peered at the footage in an attempt to solve the puzzle. So far, none of them held any luck! Ves frowned deeply at the resilience shown by the beast riders. Battles between sacred gods was fraught with danger, so it didn’t surprise him that the beast riders enjoyed additional protection. However, this abnormal resistance against poison went beyond everyone’s expectation! What was so special about the connection between the sacred gods and their chosen? Why did it surpass the capabilities of the connection between mechs and their mech pilots? While everyone came up with their own guesses, Ves believed the key to their heightened performance lay in their man-beast connection!